


i don't believe in fairytales (but i believe in you and me)

by capra



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Animal Transformation, Boys Are Dumb, Boys Are Oblivious, Chenyu - Freeform, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Style, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, good job me, i think this is officially the first fic entirely about Zuzuthan Shenanigans on the site, kind of, swan princess story inversion, zuzuthan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24908032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capra/pseuds/capra
Summary: “You! You did this to me, didn’t you?” Yuzu accuses, jabbing a finger in the mage's direction. Nathan’s immediately at Yuzu’s elbow, holding him back.“Probably, but you gotta give me more than that, kid. What’s your curse?”“Shouldn’t you know already?” Nathan asks. "Since you cast it?"“Well, I did a lot of them,” the mage shrugs. “I don’t know which one he got.”*or, the one where Yuzu turns into a swan. And a goat. And a cat. And Nathan is the vet tech who tries to help him. And the mage who started the whole thing is absolutely useless.
Relationships: Nathan Chen & Yuzuru Hanyu, Nathan Chen/Yuzuru Hanyu
Comments: 6
Kudos: 44





	i don't believe in fairytales (but i believe in you and me)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chupacabra (butyoumight)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/butyoumight/gifts).



> So a very dear friend, we'll call them **G** , pounced me in chat one night.
> 
> _"Okay, plot bunny: Yuzu suffers from the swan lake curse, except the sorcerer was drunk at the time so he turns into a swan, goat or cat at random times of the week and he gets into trouble with animal control a lot. Nate is a vet's assistant who somehow always ends up taking care of him."_
> 
> This AU grabbed me by the throat and didn't let go. So here, for the occasion of my dear **chupacabra** 's birthday, is the result.
> 
> As mentioned, this could not exist without my dear **G** 's inspiration, verve, and motivation. They singlehandedly materialized this swan within the block of marble, I just cut it free. And don't you let them tell you otherwise.
> 
> Thanks to **cake** for helping me make deadline via an excellently enthusiastic & quick beta - and a pomeranian-equipped cheering squad.
> 
> Title and epigraph are both from "Wonderland" by Natalia Kills.

### i don’t belive in fairy tales (but i believe in you and me)

*

_You be the Beast and I'll be the Beauty, beauty_

_Who needs true love as long as you love me truly?_

*

*

The sun is slanting low above the treetops, streaking the purpling sky with orange. In a small glen not too deep into the wood, a small rustic house sits with its back to an ancient, wide tree, sheltered by its branches and shaded by its height. On the front stoop of the house, a young man sits with his back to its front door, legs splayed out in front of him. His head is tipped back, skull thunking dully at a slow pace against the rough-hewn wood of the door. Ten steps or so out into the yard in front of the house, another young man stops his pacing and turns toward the sound.  
  
“Oi, quit that.”  
  
“We’ve been waiting all day.”  
  
“I know. I know.”  
  
The sitting man lifts his head to look at the standing one. “Even if he shows up at this point, we’re not going to have any time to talk to him before--”  
  
“Then I’ll keep talking to him, Yuzu,” the standing one, Nathan, says patiently. His voice is firm. “We came all this way. I’ll kick him out of his own damn bed and stay the night if we need to.”  
  
“Yeah, and what’ll I do?”  
  
“I guess it depends on which one it is tonight.”  
  
“Oh, I hope it’s not the goat.”  
  
Nathan snickers, crossing the yard. He sits down on the stoop beside Yuzu, stretching his own legs out in front of him as well. The ground is bare in front of the stone stoop, grass worn away by years of departures and returns, and dry. Dust kicks up, clinging to the rubber heels of his sneakers.  
  
“You’ll get them dirty,” Yuzu protests, dismayed.  
  
“I didn’t wear one of my collection today,” Nathan reassures him. “They’re just normal sneakers.”  
  
“You know I can’t tell the difference.”  
  
“That’s still not an excuse.”  
  
“I can’t apologize for something I don’t remember doing,” Yuzu says primly, sniffing. Nathan rolls his eyes and lets his head tip back. The air is crisp and the sky is clear, just a few feathery clouds scudding quickly across the expanse of it at a high altitude.

The sky is more orange now, and the blue is shading deeper into indigo. Yuzu sighs, letting his head slump to one side, onto Nathan’s shoulder. Nathan stiffens, breath catching in his throat, but Yuzu doesn’t seem to have noticed.  
  
“Thanks for coming with me,” Yuzu says quietly. One toe scuffs aimless patterns in the dust.  
  
Nathan scoffs. “What else was I going to do, let you get lost in the woods?”  
  
“Hey!” Yuzu headbutts Nathan’s shoulder lightly. “I can tell where I’m going.”  
  
“When there’s street signs and shit. We’re out in nowhereland. I’m surprised the GPS even still works out here.”  
  
Yuzu pulls out his phone. The 2G status bar mocks him. “Barely.”  
  
“Which is why I’m glad I came. And even moreso, now, with--” Nathan gestures to the sky and Yuzu sighs again. Nathan hurries to continue.  
  
“Hey, hey, don’t stress it. This is what friends are for - a four hour car trip and trekking off into the middle of the woods in Nowheresville, USA, to find some random kook in a shack.”  
  
Yuzu snorts, smiling despite himself. “Oh, is that the first thing in the list?”  
  
Nathan rolls his eyes. “Begging rides off of the friend with the car? Absolutely the number one thing on the Friendship to-do list. Believe me, you’re far from the only one to take advantage of my wheels.”  
  
“Are we?” Yuzu asks, and Nathan frowns.  
  
“Are we what?”  
  
“Friends,” Yuzu says. He lifts his head and turns, looking straight at Nathan. In the dimming light, his already dark eyes are wide and deep, lightless pools into which Nathan could swim without ever touching bottom.  
  
“Y-yeah, we are,” he says, looking away, out to the path at the edge of the glen.  
  
“Well, I didn’t know,” Yuzu said. “I mean, it seemed like it, but...I thought maybe you felt obligated.”  
  
“Believe me,” Nathan says, relaxing a little with the comfortable shield of humor to cushion the conversation. “No amount of obligation would have kept me around after that bite.”  
  
“Oh my god,” Yuzu groans, thunking his head onto Nathan’s shoulder once more. “You are never going to let that go.”  
  
“Nope,” Nathan says. “I mean, I can’t even razz you to my friends about it, because who the hell would believe me? So I just have to keep teasing you directly.”  
  
“The bruise healed,” Yuzu grouses, and Nathan chuckles amiably.  
  
A minute or two later, there’s noise in the trees past the glen’s edge. Before the source of it comes into view, as the bushes rustle and twigs crack underfoot, Nathan puts his arm around Yuzu’s shoulders, squeezing reassuringly.  
  
“Hey, for what it’s worth,” he says, attention on Yuzu even though his eyes are watching the path in thinly-concealed impatience. “I think it _is_ going to be the goat tonight.”  
  
“You just want me to suffer,” Yuzu sighs.  
  
“I don’t,” Nathan says, “And my shoes are what usually suffer. But you keep headbutting me, so.”  
  
Yuzu considers this for a moment. Before he can respond, the noise at the glen’s edge stops, as the person making it steps out into the clearing.  
  
“Mage Russell, I assume,” Nathan calls to him, standing up. Yuzu follows him, stretching stiff legs, glowering across the clearing at the newcomer, whose loose and layered clothing and walking staff clearly mark him as one well-suited to the sort of forest lifestyle, or maybe a role in a community theater production of _Lord of the Rings_. “We need to talk to you.”  
  
“Oh, fuck,” says the mage.

  
*

  
It started innocently enough. 

Nathan works as a veterinary technician - well, assistant veterinary technician, as he’s still in school - and he specializes in exotic animal care. In practice, though, he gets fewer parrots and gila lizards and more local wildlife - window-strike pigeons, ducks with wrenched wings. Once he assisted with care of a young buck whose antlers had gotten tangled in a string of decorative lights. It had just been trying to itch its velvet, as it was shed season, but the wires wrapped around the trunk of a thin tree decorating the center grass strip of the boulevard in the heart of the shopping district held its antlers fast. The buck had worked itself up into a frenzy before they reached it, and so Nathan will never forget the moment that the frenzy _faded_ , the moment he saw in the deer’s eyes that it understood they were there to help it. That was the day he knew he was in the right career.  
  
Urban wildlife is kind of like everyone’s pet, he thinks, and for that reason, he’s particularly fond of it. Which is why he volunteered to be part of the team to bring in a wild swan who didn’t belong to the local flock and had been getting harassed by them. They’d planned to relocate it, either to a neighboring city or a zoo, somewhere it could have a better chance of integration.  
  
That hadn’t exactly worked out, because somewhere along the line of transport, the swan had completely disappeared, as if into thin air.  
  
Nathan had been farmed out for a remote call a month or so later, to retrieve a stray goat from a suburban development with a HOA that had very specific priorities about their lawn care. The goat had been relatively cooperative at first, but the clinic wasn’t equipped to keep or kennel a goat, and the large dog cages were all full. While they figured out what to do with it, the goat had been let to wander around one of the back rooms, in which - theoretically - there was nothing it could really get into. Nathan had been assigned to mind it, just in case. He took his studying in with him, expecting it would get bored and sleepy, given the long day it had had and the amount of sedatives they’d pumped into it to keep it calm in such an alarming-smelling environment.  
  
While he was distracted with his studying, sitting in an absurdly folded-up cross-legged position in a chair he’d dragged in from the waiting room, it ate his sneakers.  
  
Nathan had barricaded the goat in the room and gone in search of his supervisor, to find out whether the air capsules in the heels of Nike AirMax sneakers would pose a digestive threat to the goat - vapor or gas released in the digestive tract could cause serious problems, and while Nathan was certainly going to allow himself to be upset about his shoes later, first he had to make sure he hadn’t just accidentally killed the goat with his negligence. But when he and the veterinarian returned to the room, the goat was gone. Just like with the swan, there was no trace of the animal, and no evidence of its escape. Nothing was damaged, not even the door handle.  
  
A few weeks after _that_ , once Nathan returned to work after his temporary suspension, a particularly wriggly cat had come in during Nathan’s shift. He wasn’t chipped, wasn’t ear-tipped, had no collar, and wasn’t fixed. They couldn’t figure out if he was a feral or a very, very mad housepet, but with no identification, he went into the kennels overnight while they made some calls, and by the end of the day it had been determined, due to the location and manner in which he’d been found and caught, very far from any residential area, that there was very little chance he was a housepet, and therefore would be sterilized and released. Nathan had the drawn the ass-o’clock early-morning check-in shift that night, and came in around three AM to check on all the kennels, fill water bowls, clean litter pans, make sure nobody’d gotten a fever or developed some sudden medical condition overnight.  
  
The tomcat definitely had.  
  
Kind of. 

And that was the day that it all clicked in Nathan’s head.

“You’re the swan,” he had declared idiotically, pointing at the naked young man crouched in the crate where the cat had been. It was not a good fit.  
  
“I’m in pain,” the man had said, “I can’t move. Shut up and get me out of here.”

  
*

  
“Mage Russell,” Nathan says. “We need to talk to you.”  
  
“Oh fuck,” says Russell. He stomps into the clearing, kicking ineffectually at a vine of clinging bramble that just won’t let go of the fur exterior of his Ugg boots. Nathan and Yuzu exchange a look. Nathan is stunned and not certain they’re really seeing what they’re seeing; Uggs? _Really?_ But Yuzu is _offended,_ and he shoves himself up off the stoop with anger already building around him like a thundercloud.

“You! You did this to me, didn’t you?” Yuzu accuses, jabbing a finger in Russell’s direction. Nathan’s immediately at Yuzu’s elbow, holding him back.  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the mage says. He’s a rake of a man, strangely proportioned and not possessed of terribly extraordinary bone structure or complexion. His long face and scruffy beard might give the impression of a forbiddingly gaunt and imposing personage if it weren’t for the way his shoulders have hunched up so high that his gawkily long neck has fully disappeared into the draped folds of his clothing.  
  
“Don’t lie!” Yuzu snaps back. “You have to know! You’re the only mage or wizard or witch or warlock or other professional of non-specified spellcrafting discipline anywhere near here. So it has to be you who spelled me.”  
  
“Okay, but you gotta give me more than that, kid. What’s your curse?”  
  
“Shouldn’t you know already?” Nathan asks.  
  
“Well, I did a lot of them,” Russell shrugs. “I don’t know which one he got.”  
  
Russell steps around Yuzu to reach his cottage and shoves the door open. The latch wasn’t even engaged, much less locked, and the door creaks as it opens. Nathan glances at Yuzu - this is all becoming so stereotypical that it _has_ to be fake. Right? The shambling woods wizard, the quaint little cottage with an ominously creaking door, the sun sinking low, counting down a time limit that looms over their heads. Are they being set up?  
  
Just inside the door, Russell unceremoniously kicks his boots off, gesturing vaguely over his shoulder at the two standing stunned on his doorstep. An umbrella stand near the door holds a duck-handled umbrella, two ski poles, and a Swiffer Wet Jet. Russell drops his walking stick in with them.  
  
“You might as well come in,” he says, crossing the small main room of the house and disappearing through a doorway. He comes back a few moments later with a short tumbler glass and a twenty-ounce bottle of ginger ale, and sits down at his table, sighing emphatically as he pours himself a drink.  
  
“Make yourselves comfortable,” he says, then looks at them both more carefully, gaze flicking between the two of them before settling on Yuzu. “On second thought, you, stay on the floor. I don’t want hooves on the upholstery.”  
  
Yuzu bristles _._ “ _That_ upholstery?” he asks archly, eyeing the ratty plaid couch and armchair set. It looked stubborn, like it had been placed there sometime in the 1970’s and refused to move since then, not even to lift its feet enough to vacuum underneath. “That would be such a shame.” Nathan’s warning grip on his shoulder tightens.  
  
“We’ve been waiting all day,” Nathan says, strained, “And it’s already dusk. So I would appreciate it if we didn’t beat around the bush about this. My friend here has been transforming into animals, and we want to know how you did it and how to undo it.”  
  
“Animals?” Russell says.  
  
“Yes,” Yuzu snaps, “What, do you also have a habit of cursing people to turn into tea cozies?”  
  
“No,” Russell says, “And that’d be a stupid curse. Who even uses those? No, what I mean is - animal _S?_ Plural?”  
  
“Yes,” Yuzu says.  
  
“Which ones?”  
  
“You don’t even know that much?” Yuzu asks, hovering on the edge between horror and anger. “Do you even know _how_ to do-- whatever it is that you do? Are you really a mage?”  
  
“Well my name _is_ Mage Russell,” Russell says. He sips his drink. “And of course I know how. You turn into animals, don’t you? That’s proof.”  
  
Nathan exhales, feeling a headache coming on. “We would like it if he did not do that anymore,” he says patiently, “So would you please tell us how?”  
  
“No, hold on,” Yuzu cuts in. “I want to know _why._ Why me?”  
  
Russell ignores Yuzu and answers Nathan. “Well, the short answer is that I can’t do anything about it. Hold on,” he adds quickly, as Yuzu’s gaze flashes murderous. “What I mean is that the un-curse is something _you_ need to do. Well. Is something you need to have someone do _to_ you.”  
  
Nathan glances at Yuzu uneasily, then back at Russell. “We had been afraid of that. Is this the Swan Princess curse?”  
  
“The what?” Russell asks.  
  
“You know, the Swan Princess. Like in the movie.”  
  
“I don’t watch television,” Russell shrugs. Nathan glances at the small tube television sitting opposite his armchair. It’s the type that came with its own cabinet, and Nathan would bet rather confidently that it has now become a lovely apartment building for generations of families of spiders.  
  
“ _What_ do I need someone to do?” Yuzu presses impatiently. Again Nathan glances at him with concern; if Yuzu was in his cat or goat form, or even as his swan if he was feeling particularly cooperative, Nathan would rub Yuzu’s back soothingly to calm him down without a second thought. But when Yuzu’s in human form, Nathan isn’t as confident about touching him. That gripping hand on his shoulder is about as much as he’s dared so far.  
  
“Russell, I had assumed you knew how the spell works since you’re the one who cast it, but now I’m wondering how much you _do_ know about it,” Nathan says. “Yuzu transforms at twilight, so I would appreciate it if you’d tell us what we need to know before I have to take notes for the both of us and he eats your curtains.”  
  
Yuzu glances at the curtains in question: paisley. “Ugh, no, those look disgusting.”  
  
“They’ll look tasty in a few minutes if I was right about which one it is tonight,” Nathan says.  
  
“That is not helping,” Yuzu grumbles.  
  
“Just don’t even think about touching my books,” Russell adds, at which point Nathan is distracted by noticing, for the first time, Russell’s bookshelf. Book _wall_ is more like it; opposite the television, and next to the window with the best lighting, one entire wall of the living space is filled with built-in bookshelves, which are themselves filled to and beyond the point of overflow. Like almost everything else in the house, these look very used. Certain sections of the collection are extremely dusty, with more books jammed in horizontally between the tops of shorter books and the shelves above them. Other areas, particularly those in easy reach of the couch, are bright and clean, every book placed carefully.

“Can I look at your books later?” Nathan asks Russell. “Do you have anything on biome diversity?” 

“ _Not helping,_ ” Yuzu emphasizes. Nathan closes his mouth sheepishly.  
  
“You need to get somebody to tell you they love you, and then you’ll stop turning into a swan,” Russell says. He swirls the amber liquid in his glass, sips it, and nods at them both, pointing from one to the other and back again for emphasis. “It’s a really easy one, I’m surprised you didn’t solve it already.”  
  
“Okay, that’s for the swan,” Yuzu says, impatient. “What about for the cat and the goat?”  
  
“Yeah, it’s not supposed to do that,” Russell says, frowning. “I mean aside from the fact that my aim was off, I guess it didn’t go quite right. Do you have a pet, were you like, standing next to a goat or something?”  
  
“ _No,_ ” Yuzu sighs.  
  
“Huh.” Russell takes another sip of his drink. “Honestly, that one’s probably my bad. I think the newt’s eyes I used were past expiration date. Or maybe they had cataracts? Hmm. I bet that’s why my aim was off, too, the spell couldn’t see clearly.”  
  
Yuzu inhales. “Are you fucking serious--?”  
  
“So it wasn’t intended for him at _all?'_ Nathan asks, boggled.  
  
“Nah,” Russell says. “But hey, think about it this way, a goat’s better than like, a honey badger or something, right? Probably you'd kill anyone trying to profess their love to you before they could even get the words out, if you were a honey badger. That’d suck.”  
  
“Goat, swan, _and_ cat,” Yuzu says.  
  
“But those are nice animals, not honey badgers,” Russell emphasizes.  
  
“Excuse me, the swan is mean as _shit,_ ” Nathan says, “and uses his wings like baseball bats.”  
  
“Not on _you,_ ” Yuzu interrupts, huffy.  
  
“No, just on my _supervisor,_ ” Nathan sighs. “Which, as I have reminded you more than once, is why my practical exam has been delayed for a month. He's still recovering.”

Yuzu sniffs. “Fine. But he deserved it.”  
  
Nathan’s headache is fully blooming across his temples by now, and he rubs them wearily instead of answering.  
  
Russell is curious. “Oh, he did?”  
  
“Nate,” Yuzu says, all sugar, “Tell the incompetent sorcerer how one takes a swan's temperature in a veterinary clinic.”

“I’m guessing not a spell,” Russell says. “You should use spells for that.”

“I'm fairly certain I would _not_ trust someone like you with that,” Nathan says dryly. 

“Well, okay, so swans aren’t actually nice,” Russell says, leaning back. One elbow hooked over the back slats of his rough-hewn wooden chair, he points at Yuzu with optimistic confidence. “But that is only one third of the time, right? So it’s _good_ you got the mixed set.”

“Oh, yes. Because goats are so _notoriously_ cooperative and docile,” Nathan snarks. By this point, he can feel a vein in his forehead twitching in irritation. “I need an Advil,” he grumbles, and Yuzu unzips a little compartment in his shoulder bag and starts digging through it.  
  
“Fuck. Okay, look,” Nathan says, “Clearly you know _nothing_ about animals, because anyone who’s been around a goat for three minutes knows they are little shits.”  
  
Yuzu looks up from his task. “That shirt was ugly.”

“It was my favorite shirt!”

Yuzu shrugs. “I gave you my shirt to make up for it.”

Nathan’s unimpressed. “You know it's super tight on me, right?” But Yuzu just shrugs again, and Nathan sighs.  
  
“And also,” Yuzu says, because he can’t leave well enough alone, “Now you don’t have an ugly shirt for your favorite shirt.” He holds out two Advil for Nathan with a self-satisfied nod.  
  
Nathan rolls his eyes and takes the pills, then looks to Russell. “Do you have more ginger ale or water or something? I need something to wash these down with.”  
  
“Uh,” Russell says, “Water. Is in the kitchen.” 

Nathan stands, crossing to the doorway that Russell had gone through to get his own drink. Yuzu waves a hand for his attention, and Nathan pauses, expectant.  
  
“I want ginger ale,” Yuzu requests. “I don’t feel well.”  
  
Nathan grimaces. “It’s soon, huh?”  
  
“Yeah, probably.” Yuzu frowns.  
  
Nathan goes into the kitchen, which he finds is just as small and well-worn as the rest of the house. From the strangest refrigerator he’s seen - avocado-colored, and with rounded sides - Nathan produces a pitcher of cold water. It takes him longer to find the drinking glasses, but eventually he does so, in the drawer next to the refrigerator.  
  
Nathan returns to the living room with two glasses of cold water. Handing one to Yuzu apologetically, he drinks the second himself, downing his painkillers with it. “I couldn’t find the ginger ale,” he explains. “And why do you keep your glasses in a _drawer?"_  
  
“Then they can’t fall,” Russell says, with a tone that suggests Nathan should have figured that out on his own. “And I don’t have ginger ale.” 

Nathan and Yuzu look at the clearly labeled bottle on the table next to his glass, then at him, then back to his glass. Where the ice cubes are not floating, but settled at the bottom of the glass.

Nathan looks up at Russell slowly. “Are you _drunk_ right now?”  
  
“Nope,” Russell says.  
  
“Are you lying?”  
  
“Maybe.” Russell sulks. He hiccups.

“Hey, Yuzu,” Nathan says, pinning Russell with a glare. “Do you think you could do a cat transformation real fast?”

Yuzu sighs. “Obviously no, you know I can’t control it like that. ...Why?”

“A shame,” Nathan says, deadpan. “I was gonna tell you to go pee in his shoes.”

Russell, unbothered, pours himself more whiskey from his ginger ale bottle. “He's a cute cat though, right? I mean, he’s a cat. All cats are cute.”

“Excuse me,” Yuzu huffs, “I'm a cute everything.”

Nathan rolls his eyes. “He peed on all my clothing and the sofa.”

Russell takes another drink, clearly not sure what to do with that information. “Uh, okay?”  
  
“He doesn’t think like a person when he’s like that,” Nathan clarifies impatiently, as Yuzu puffs up with embarrassment behind him. “ _Obviously._ ”  
  
“Obviously,” Russell repeats, clearly unimpressed.

“Sometimes I know I’m myself more than other times,” Yuzu contributes defensively. “The more I transform into each form, the more I remember myself in that form. I haven’t done the cat enough times, so I still lose cognition in that form.”  
  
“Which is _another_ thing,” Nathan adds, refocusing the hot seat of this conversation where it belongs, on Russell. “Do you have any idea what kind of danger I’ve had to fish him out of because he couldn’t look out for himself because of _your_ stupid spell?”  
  
“No, but I have this feeling that you’re going to tell me,” Russell sighs.  
  
“I’m not,” Nathan says, “because you can’t even take this seriously and you’ll just mock him more, when none of this is his fault to start with.” He counts to ten, breathing deeply. 

“Ok, so, why did you guys want to talk to me?” Russell asks, sounding bored, and the small amount of zen that Nathan has managed to gather evaporates again. 

“I am seriously regretting coming to talk to you at all, honestly,” Nathan grits.

Yuzu smacks his shoulder bag down on the table in front of Nathan, pointing another accusatory finger at Russell. “We wanted answers!”

“I _gave_ you answers,” Russell says.

“I don't like those answers,” Yuzu says. He braces himself with one hand on Nathan’s shoulder and bends down to unlace his sneakers and kick them off. “Give me different ones.”  
  
Nathan knows Yuzu can feel the change coming on, and soon, if he’s already taking his shoes off. This irritates him even more - they’ve spent a whole day and a lot of effort and patience on this visit, and for all that trouble have learned almost nothing to help Yuzu.

Across the table from him, Russell pours out the last of his whiskey into his glass and swirls it around, looking supremely unconcerned by the tension either of his guests are feeling.  
  
“Maybe you don’t like what I’m saying because you, I dunno, seem like you don’t like me much?” Russell shrugs and drains his glass. “But that doesn’t change facts. I’m still right.”

“About _what?"_ Yuzu yelps.  
  
“You just gotta get someone to tell you they love you.”  
  
“And if we’ve already had that happen...a lot...and he’s still transforming?”

Russell waves his hand dismissively. “Then you’re doing it wrong. Like I said, you got an easy one. All you need is to make someone fall in love with you. You don’t even have to love them back. You clean up good, kid. You’re all set. Plus you're in great shape and aren't a crossfit asshole, so this should be extra easy for you.”

*

After extricating the whole adult naked _human_ out of his cat kennel, Nathan had then stashed the man in one of the patient exam rooms while he ran back home to get a change of clothes for him to wear. No one else was scheduled at that hour, but even so, Nathan spent the whole bike ride there and back worrying that someone would come in, for whatever reason, and discover the naked man hanging out in the back of the clinic. It didn’t take much imagination to guess exactly what conclusions they’d come to, and Nathan did _not_ want to have to explain how a naked transient crazy man got into the clinic without Nathan letting him in. Nor did he want to lose his internship.  
  
He had explained both of these points, in detail, and in repetition, to the man, whose name he learned was Yuzuru, while completing his night’s work as briskly as he could. Then he left, taking Yuzuru with him. They holed up in a corner of the student union, a safe distance away from anyone else, students and insomniacs alike.

“You transform,” Nathan had repeated. Several times, until Yuzuru got impatient with it.  
  
“If you’re not going to be helpful,” Yuzuru had said, and Nathan had waved his hands fretfully, cutting him off.  
  
“No, I am, I am, I just...it’s a lot.”  
  
“How do you think I felt the first time I woke up naked on a park bench at five AM?” Yuzuru challenged him, irritated.  
  
“Shit,” Nathan said. “You’re lucky campus security didn’t get you.”  
  
“I’m not lucky,” Yuzuru had said, “I’m fast.” Nathan blinked, perplexed. “Soccer?” Yuzu tried. “First string striker for our soccer team? We’ve won the division five years in a--oh, forget it, you’re a total book nerd.”  
  
“I watch sports!” Nathan protested. “Basketball.”

Yuzuru sighed. “Of course.”  
  
“Look, whatever, sorry I don’t know more about the sports teams here,” Nathan said. “But I _do_ know animals. So you’re not on your own with this anymore. Now you’ve got help.”

Yuzuru scoffed. “You’re going to help me?”  
  
Nathan shrugged. “Unless you want to take your chances with animal control again.”  
  
“Again?”  
  
“Out at the lake, about two months ago? The veterinary school went out to help catch a stray swan and relocate it, but it disappeared halfway through transit. That was you, wasn’t it?”  
  
“I guess so,” Yuzuru said. “I don’t remember everything from when I transform.”  
  
“Huh,” Nathan said. “Then all the more reason you need someone looking out for you. I was on that call, you know. I guess that was when we met first.”  
  
“That is...let’s not count that,” Yuzuru grimaced. “Let’s only count meeting when we both only have two legs.”

“Swans have two--”  
  
“Stop,” Yuzuru sighed. “Look, what do I even call you?”  
  
“Oh! Shit! I totally forgot, sorry.” Nathan stuck his hand out, smiling. “I’m Nathan. Nice to meet you, Yuzuru.”

“Just Yuzu.”

“Huh?”  
  
“Just...Yuzu. It sounds weird for you to call me Yuzuru when you’ve already seen me naked.”  
  
Nathan blushed, and then Yuzu, realizing, did too. “Um.”  
  
“It--it’s four AM,” Nathan said quickly, standing up. “Nothing we say right now counts, we’re pre-coffee. Right?”  
  
“Right,” Yuzu agreed. “Let’s, uh, fix that.”

*

“We should chart it,” Nathan mused one night a few weeks later, while Yuzu and he were laying around Nathan’s apartment on the pretext of helping each other study. “The times you transform. Which animal it is, and what you were doing beforehand, and how long it lasts, and stuff.”

“Data,” Yuzu said, sitting up. “To find the patterns.”  
  
“Exactly,” Nathan agreed. “If we can find patterns, we can start developing hypotheses on how to control it.”  
  
“Or at least how to predict it and adjust for it proactively,” Yuzu countered. “Training myself to notice the signs before I actually transform would help me lose less cell phones, at least.”  
  
“Is _that_ why your number is always changing?” Nathan asked.  
  
“Yeah, I switched over to cheap burner phones when this started happening about four months ago,” Yuzu sighed. “And I guess it helps to make it harder for the fanclub to get my number. Or makes it matter less when they do.”  
  
“Fanclub?”  
  
Yuzu sighed again, this time at Nathan. “Do you even look up from your books? Ever?”  
  
Nathan huffed. “I do! I have this whole thing with you.”  
  
“That doesn’t count,” Yuzu said, cheeks pinked, though he declined to explain why. “Regardless, you’re right. Data will help.”

*

A week later, Yuzu rolled over onto his stomach, putting aside his textbook, and propped himself up on his elbows. “Nathan, I just had a thought.”

“Mmhmm?”  
  
“I think I need to be confessed to.”  
  
Nathan choked on his latte and pulled his nose out of his lecture notes. “You--what?”  
  
“I need someone to confess to me,” Yuzu repeated. “People get cursed when they’re supposed to figure out something important about themselves, or when they’re supposed to fall in love, right?”  
  
“In a world where curses and true love and stuff exists, I guess,” Nathan replied.  
  
“I turn into a goat,” Yuzu shot back, deadpan.  
  
“Okay, point.”  
  
“So I’m thinking maybe the reason the data isn’t forming a pattern is because we haven’t been looking for the right controlling factor. I think there’s an interpersonal aspect.”  
  
Nathan blinked. “And what do you think we should do about it?”  
  
Yuzu tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Does your car have four-wheel drive?”

  
  
*

  
  
“Plus you're in great shape and aren't a crossfit asshole, so this should be extra easy for you.” Russell sits back in his chair looking supremely satisfied, confident he’s solved the whole situation.

Unimpressed, Yuzu unzips his bag and upends it over the table. A huge pile of _stuff_ falls out of it: love letters, lucky tokens, bras, and what looks like a few voodoo dolls, with a dozen other miscellaneous odds and ends mixed in as well.

“Exhibits A through EE,” Yuzu declares. Russell blinks at the mess. A few cards slide off the pile and onto the floor.

“Crossfit...asshole?” Nathan asks, addressing the question to Russell.

“Long story,” Russell says. “Is that...used underwear?”

“Yep.” Nathan challenges Russell with a glare. At his elbow, Yuzu stands with arms crossed, indignant. “Apparently this is par for the course for him.”

“It's the usual contents of my mailbox on a Monday after a game.”

Russell looks up from the bra he’s examining. “Game?”

Nathan rolls his eyes. “He's a bit of a celebrity at the local college.”

“Excuse me, ‘bit of’?” Yuzu asks, and Nathan presses two fingertips to each temple, rubbing in small circles.  
  
“Is that really the point here?”

“I'm first string,” Yuzu tells Russell imperiously. “I'm in the starting lineup. Of course I'm popular.”

“Well you know, people say 'I love you' real easily these days,” Russell shrugs. “I say I love you to my Jameson twice a day.”

“You have a problem.”

“Thanks for the input,” Russell tells Nathan dismissively. Then he turns to Yuzu, raking his hair back from his brow with a frustrated huff. “Look, kid, you just have to find someone who means it.”

Yuzu gestures broadly at the pile of gifts on the table between them and Russell. Nathan rolls his eyes. “Trust me. They mean it.”

There’s silence for a moment, as Russell digs curiously into the pile of Yuzu’s gifts, shoving aside letters to find the objects mixed in with them. He finds a box of chocolates and rips it open, eating two before turning the tray toward Yuzu and Nathan to offer them some.  
  
Yuzu eyes him levelly. “Hey, Mage. Is there a way I can turn into a swan at will instead of willy-nilly?”

Russell frowns. “Uhhhh maybe, but I thought you wanted to get un-cursed, and that’d take adding another curse on.” He pops another chocolate in his mouth and speaks around it. “Why?”

“I don't have a baseball bat handy.”

“Tch.” Pushing his chair away from the table, Russell stands up and leaves the room. Nathan and Yuzu are left to themselves for a moment, and Yuzu rakes both hands into his hair, knotting his fingers into fists and yanking in frustration.

Nathan reaches up, taking Yuzu by the wrist, gently coaxing him to let go of his hair. “Okay, let's calm down a minute.”

“If I’m a swan when I smack him,” Yuzu reasons, “it's not assault.” Nathan can’t help but smile at that.

“While I completely agree with the sentiment, let's calm down anyway.”

Russell comes back into the room carrying another bottle of ‘ginger ale’ and a small bag of beer nuts. He glares at them both levelly, exasperated. “Look, kids, I am being totally straight with you - I already told you the way to break the curse.”

“And we're telling you you're full of bullshit,” Yuzu snaps, “because it's not working. Look how many ‘I-love-you’s are in that pile of letters.”

“Eh. Maybe they’re addressed to the wrong person,” Russell shrugs. He crosses past the kitchen table into his living room and flops down on his ratty couch. Yuzu follows him, and Nathan twists around in his chair to keep him in sight as well.  
  
“I think _not,_ ” Yuzu huffs.

Russell waves his hand dismissively. “Some of them spelled your name wrong.”

“ _Some didn't,_ ” Yuzu snaps back.  
  
Nathan sighs. He can’t blame Yuzu his frustration, but it’s not getting them anywhere. Yuzu’s tired, Nathan’s tired, and Russell is becoming so intractable that Nathan’s starting to doubt they’ll get anything else useful from him even if they stayed all night.

“There's no way you can break it?” he asks once more.

“I’m telling you that’s not the way to do it,” Russell says.  
  
“...That isn’t a _no,_ ” Yuzu points out.  
  
“Well, no. I _can_ break it for you, kind of, but I don’t really recommend it. You’d be better off breaking it yourself the right way.” 

“Kind of?”

“We've tried it before and the results were…” Russell grimaces. 

Yuzu is terminally curious. “What happened?”

“ _Well,_ ” Russell hedges, sipping his whiskey, “the person _did_ stop transforming back and forth.”

Yuzu puffs up. “Well that’s exactly what I want--”

Nathan interrupts. “Not in human setting, though. Right?”

Russell grins, pointing finger guns at Nathan. Yuzu’s expression falls. 

“Then why did you use the spell in the first place?” Nathan asks.

Again Russell shrugs. “Practice makes perfect.”

Yuzu stares. 

Russell stares back. “So...go keep practicing,” he says, with a shooing gesture. “Please leave my house now.”  
  
“No,” Yuzu says, planting both feet firmly in the carpet. Nathan sighs, getting up from the table. Yuzu’s definitely going goat tonight, he can tell. And honestly, Nathan’s surprised he hasn’t already - by the position of the sun through the windows of Russell’s cottage, it’s already well past the hour that Yuzu usually pops feathers or fur.

Meanwhile, Yuzu and Russell are still squaring off.  
  
“ _Yes,_ ” Russell repeats. He stands, brushes lint off his robes, and glares at them both. “Actually, you know what? You stay. I’ll go.”  
  
From one moment to the next, Russell disappears out of the room. There’s a soft _poof_ of air moving into the vacuum where he was standing, much like the rush of air that accompanies Yuzu every time he shrinks by 95% of his body mass and becomes a nine pound cat with long fluffy yellow fur. Yuzu and Nathan look at each other, and Nathan opens his mouth to speak.

There’s a sudden crash not far outside the cottage, the sounds of a bush crunching and snapping under a sudden weight, and a muted expletive. Then the dry rustle of leaves and three more obscenities. Nathan and Yuzu share a look.  
  
“He can’t handle transmogrification and he’s attempting teleportation?” Nathan tsks.  
  
Yuzu scowls. “I hope he splinched himself.”

*

They kept researching, kept collecting data, and Yuzu kept coming over for ‘study nights’ at Nathan’s apartment. They _did_ study, some, but mostly Yuzu was there because they had both noticed, after their first few meetings - which happened on Thursdays because that was the only night that they both had free time, between Yuzu’s practice schedule and Nathan’s clinic rotation - that his most common transformation, the swan, was starting to become reliable, and it was happening on Thursdays. So it made sense, they decided, to keep meeting on Thursdays, so that Nathan would always be there to take care of Yuzu once he went feathery.

Some nights, the cat showed up instead of the swan. Nathan took it in stride, simply switching out a little stuffed cat bed for the braided ‘nest’ he had made for the swan out of shredded towels. And when Yuzu had had a cranky day, more often than not it was the goat that showed up that evening. In those cases Nathan shoved both of the smaller pet beds under his bed and dragged out the ratty jute floor mat he had picked up from the thrift store for two bucks. But after a while there wasn’t a Thursday that _didn’t_ end in Yuzu transformed, so he began simply planning to stay over at Nathan’s apartment, because there was still no controlling when the transformation wore off, and usually, it was somewhere in the middle of the night.

Nathan put his foot down about that after he rescued cat-Yuzu from the animal shelter for the second time.

“I’m training to be a doctor, Yuzu, not a lawyer,” he explained. “I have no idea how I’d get you out of trouble if you fall asleep in the park, wake up naked, and get arrested for public indecency.”

“You’d figure something out,” Yuzu had shrugged.  
  
“Don’t care,” Nathan had insisted. “You’re staying inside at night.”

And it did work well for them. As they continued to work together, all of Yuzu’s animal forms grew more comfortable around Nathan. The goat listened to him when he told it ‘no,’ ‘sit,’ and ‘spit that out,’ and when the swan finished a preening session, it snuggled up against Nathan’s side, tucking its head under his elbow while he wrote papers on his laptop, and Nathan learned that its breath wheezed slightly, almost like a tiny snore, when it dreamt. The cat acclimated fastest, and quickly made a habit of just flopping onto Nathan as soon as the transformation was finished, like Nathan was a pillow made just for it, and usually spent the next few hours sleeping off the exhaustion of the change on his lap. Often the cat would sleep through the rest of the night, and Nathan would carefully settle him onto his little cat bed before going to sleep himself.

Except that sometimes Nathan woke up first, and discovered that the cat would rather sleep on top of Nathan, who was both warmer and softer than its own bed. Those mornings, when Nathan had woken up before Yuzu had, he was often awake _because_ Yuzu wasn’t yet - and, still asleep, had abruptly gone back to being _Yuzu_ , still sleeping on top of Nathan, and thus was suddenly _much heavier_ than the cat. He also was, invariably, not wearing a blanket. Or anything else. Nathan reminded himself that the first time he saw Yuzu naked, he was crammed into the kennel at the animal clinic and the whole experience was just really weird and hilarious and looked like something out of a sitcom, not real life. If he reminded himself of this enough, he reasoned, he wouldn’t embarrass himself when he had a hot, naked Yuzu cuddled up to him in the early morning.

Belatedly, Nathan realized this probably meant he he found Yuzu attractive, a realization which came with its own...complications. But it was understandable, right? As an athlete, Yuzu had to remain fit. So of course that body was cut, Nathan reasoned, after staring at Yuzu’s abs a bit too much.  
  
“It’s a candy bar,” he muttered to himself one frustrated Friday morning after Yuzu had departed for his morning classes, staring into the middle distance between himself and his organic chemistry textbook. “I can’t be held responsible for this. It’s a fucking candy bar.”

Nathan’s roommate Charlie looked up at Nathan over the top of his laptop. “Candy bar?”  
  
“Um,” Nathan said, glancing reflexively toward the door that Yuzu had just left through. Charlie followed his gaze and nodded knowingly.  
  
“Aaah, I see,” he declared. “You are a gay disaster.”

“It’s an objective fact,” Nathan grumbled, meaning Yuzu’s candy bar abs, but he can’t exactly _disagree_ with Charlie’s assessment, either.

It wasn’t all distress, though. Some nights, Nathan simply couldn’t uproot the cat from its perch, and just left it where it was - on a counter, or the back of a chair in the living room. Which meant that at some point through the night, either the cat woke up and decided to move somewhere else, _or_ a loud crash announced that Yuzu was back to himself, and a short while later, Yuzu would inevitably shuffle into Nathan’s bedroom, get into pajamas, and shuffle back out to the living room to sleep on the couch.

One night, Nathan went to sleep with the cat purring along on the bed beside him.

He woke up in the morning to a _scream_ and a shout.

“Shit, shit, dude, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were there.” Charlie stood in the middle of the bathroom. In the shower was Yuzu, dripping wet with cold water and sputtering - and, of course, naked.

Yuzu muttered something in Japanese, flapping one hand crossly at Charlie. Nathan tried to intercede.  
  
“Yuzu, hey, why are you out here?”

Charlie nodded, handing Yuzu a towel. “Yeah, man. Nobody sleeps in the tub except at keggers. You can always crash on the couch, even if I’m at my desk late, I can grab my headphones or somethin’.”

“Or just _stay_ in my room next time,” Nathan said. Charlie _looked_ at him. Nathan looked back, and then realized what he’d just said, and flushed dark red. Yuzu glared at them both, shivering and looking very much like - Nathan couldn’t help but think it - a wet cat.

*

The next time Yuzu came over, he seemed uneasy. Nathan let him stew in it for a while, but eventually broke down and asked what was up.

“I think that’s what I need to be asking you,” Yuzu had said, frowning. “It’s just, I passed Charlie in the hall on my way in. He told me ‘good luck,’ and not to let you be a dumbass and let me go. Quote, 'you're the best thing that's happened to that nerd all year,' end quote. Mind telling me what the FUCK is going on?”

Nathan frowned. Charlie was the best roommate he’d ever had, laid back and chill, and had always seemed to like Yuzu a lot. He’d never said anything disapproving, much less threatening, to Yuzu before.

“I don’t know,” he said, troubled. “Charlie hasn’t said anything to me.”  
  
“Should we ask the internet?” Yuzu wondered.

*

In the end, they don’t solve it. For all their data collection, all their trend plotting and theorizing, one day, Yuzu simply stops transforming. Two Thursdays go by without a single feather or bit of fur, and they conclude, hesitantly, that the problem has been resolved.

For a while they don’t let their guard down. They maintain their routine, continuing their Thursday evening study dates for a few more weeks, waiting for the transformations to come back. But they never do. And because they’re in such vastly different fields of study, they don’t share any classes, and it’s hard to help each other study disciplines they barely understand. Eventually, Nathan hesitantly tells Yuzu he shouldn’t feel obligated to sleep over at Nathan’s place every Thursday night anymore.

He doesn’t see or hear from Yuzu again for a week and a half, and spends all ten days cursing himself and his stupidity in every way he can think of.

On the eleventh day, Yuzu is waiting for Nathan in the student union, sitting in his favorite chair. Nathan stands in front of him, caught off-guard and anxious. How many of his thoughts were visible in his expression in the moment he met Yuzu’s gaze?

“I want to try one more thing,” Yuzu says, and Nathan frowns.  
  
“Did it happen again?”  
  
“No, but I need to know why. Are you free this weekend?” 

*

They make the drive out to the forest once more: four hours on the road and half an hour hiking the trail up to the clearing where Russell’s little house stands. 

Well, stood.  
  
Standing in the middle of the empty clearing, Yuzu turns slowly in a circle, mouth hanging slightly open.

“It can’t be just _gone,_ ” he repeats again.

“I don’t know, Yuzu, he _is_ a mage.” Nathan stands a small distance away from Yuzu, watching him with dismay. Yuzu looks helpless, staring at the foot of the tree where the house used to sit as if he could will it back into existence just by staring hard enough.

“I thought it would be more decisive,” Yuzu mutters. “I thought there would be closure.”  
  
“I guess life just isn't like that sometimes,” Nathan says quietly.

“I guess not.”

Yuzu sits down in the dust where Russell’s stoop used to be, knees drawn up to his chest, and starts drawing patterns in the dirt with his fingertip.

The sky is once again shading purple and orange; the year has turned since they’ve been here last, and the clearing that smelled like warm dry leaves and cinnamon now is filled with the scents of wet soil and young green leaves. Though the days are much longer now, and the hour is much later than it had been, the sky looks the same. The air smells of ozone, and Nathan remembers he forgot to check the forecast, and whether it’s calling for rain tonight. They didn’t bring an umbrella.

Nathan sits down beside Yuzu. “You okay?”

“Yes. I think so.” Yuzu shrugs. “No. It feels unfinished. It’s _itching_ at my brain, a problem I can’t solve. Can never solve, probably. It’s like, the feeling of walking down a staircase and missing the last step.”  
  
“Oof,” Nathan says. “I guess I understand. But I dunno, I’m okay with some things remaining mysterious. I don’t think that I’m capable of understanding everything in this world.”

“Not everything,” Yuzu grouses, “But my own _body_ , maybe!” Nathan flinches - he hadn’t thought of it that way before, and in that light, Yuzu’s fear of leaving an unknown quantity unresolved makes perfect sense.  
  
Yuzu pushes himself to his feet, beginning to pace, as he lets out the frustration that has been bottled up in his chest for the past two months. “It just feels so...so unfair. Nothing changed. Nothing different happened! We put so much _work_ in, we looked at all the avenues. We documented two _dozen_ different ways a person can be confessed to, and none of them worked,” he says, throwing his hands up over his head as he turns on his heel. “We made _spreadsheets!_ ” 

“I know, Yuzu,” Nathan says, uneasy. He gets up, approaching Yuzu with one hand extended to pacify him, but Yuzu twists to glare at him over his shoulder.  
  
“Don’t patronize me. I’m serious! This is unbelievable. After putting us through all of this, after -- and it just stops? And he just, just disappears? Agh!”

It’s clear Yuzu doesn’t want or need Nathan’s help to be angry, so Nathan sits down at the base of the big tree to think and watch the sky darken as he waits out Yuzu’s temper. Eventually, after quite a bit more pacing and ranting, Yuzu has spent most of his extra energy, and his momentum fizzles out.

Sitting down next to Nathan, Yuzu tips into the arc of Nathan’s outstretched arm gratefully, resting his head on his shoulder with a sulky huff. “I guess now I'll never know."

They’re quiet together for a while. Nathan watches clouds scudding across the sky, chunky things with lavender bellies, reflecting the hues of the gathering dusk. 

He makes a decision.

“Yuzu?” he says.  
  
“Yeah?” Yuzu asks. His eyes are closed, brow pressed against the ball of Nathan’s shoulder, and Nathan exhales and removes his arm from around Yuzu’s shoulders. Yuzu sits up, eyes opening, and looks at Nathan with a flicker of hurt in his eyes.

“What is it?”  
  
“Well,” Nathan says. “Um.”  
  
Yuzu gestures impatiently. “Um?”

“There... Well, I didn't think it _counted_ , so I didn't, uh, mention it, but there _was_ one other declaration. Confession. Thing. To you.”  
  
Yuzu blinks and Nathan gulps nervously.

“And, um, I think maybethat'swhatdidit,” he says, all in a rush.

“Why didn't you _tell me this_?” Yuzu yelps, his whole face lighting up. Even his spine straightens, energized by possibility, by a glimpse of a thread of potential that he can follow out of this existential dead end. “When was it? How was it? Was it a letter? A dm? We established digital or long distance contact can't do it…”

“Um, none of those,” Nathan says, cutting off Yuzu’s interrogation. Yuzu stares at him, expectant, waiting, and Nathan looks away, biting his lip.

“...You were asleep,” he says finally.

Yuzu frowns. “I thought we established that I had to be aware of the confession.”  
  
“We _might_ have been wrong about that,” Nathan says uncomfortably.

Yuzu looks at him. _Looks_ at him, and then tugs Nathan’s shoulder to turn him so Nathan’s fully looking at him, too. 

“Tell me.”

“You were a swan at the time.”

Nathan closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see the math adding up behind Yuzu’s eyes. Yuzu knows that only one person knows that Yuzu can _be_ a swan. Could be a swan. Whatever. 

Which means he knows that if he _was_ a swan around any human, there's only one human that that could have been.

Nevertheless, Yuzu simply stays silent, for long enough that Nathan peeks one eye open to look at him again, because the weight of Yuzu’s stare is a physical thing and Nathan’s not breathing properly with it weighing him down like this.

“And?” Yuzu demands. His expression is too complex for Nathan to decipher.

“Come on,” Nathan protests, stammering a little. “You know what I mean.”

Yuzu doesn’t budge. “So say it.”

“Come _on_ ,” Nathan begs. Yuzu shakes his head, unfeelingly resolute.

“Say it.”

Nathan huffs, anger flaring up defensively as he’s held under the microscope of Yuzu’s examination.

“Fine, okay! Okay. I maybe might have given you a little kiss while you were asleep in my apartment one time a couple months ago - um, wait, it was seven weeks - when you were a swan.”

“That was the last transformation I had!” Yuzu squeaks.

Nathan nods. “Um, yeah, and--”  
  
Yuzu has grabbed Nathan by both his shoulders. Half-sentences are spilling from his mouth in Japanese.

“Shut up so I can tell you,” Nathan grumbles.

“Don't tell me to shut up!” Yuzu snaps.

“Shut! Up!”

Silence. Nathan exhales, rubbing his temples. Yuzu sits in front of him, all but vibrating, literally biting his lip to stay quiet.

“You were really cute, and you had your head tucked under your wing but your bill was sticking out and it was so dumb and cute and a total Hallmark moment, but I didn't take a picture because of course I didn't, that's--”

“against the rules,” Yuzu recites together with Nathan.

“Against the rules, right,” Nathan repeats. “But you were just…” He trails off, and looks away from the arithmetic in Yuzu’s gaze. It is terrifyingly sharp, and Nathan feels naked in front of it.

“So anyway, uh. That might have done it.”

Yuzu snorts, and Nathan, because he has no self preservation, looks back at him. Yuzu is _smiling_?

“Oh no you don't,” Yuzu is saying. “You are gonna tell me exactly how you said it.”

Nathan whines and covers his face in both hands. “You are torturing me on _purpose_ now.”

“No,” Yuzu says easily, “that comes later.” 

Nathan squeaks.

They stare each other down for a long moment, Nathan recalcitrant and Yuzu calmly smug. He _knows_ he’s got Nathan, _knows_ he can force Nathan to confess this all over again, and Nathan is seriously questioning the wisdom of having offered up this information at all. Yuzu’s going to take this confession as compensation for the two months of fear and uncertainty Nathan’s caused him by not coming clean about the kiss, and then he’s going to go back to not talking to Nathan anymore. He’s got every right, Nathan figures, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s all going to be over.

He doesn’t want it to be over. 

“I kissed the back of your head, where your neck is all curve and smooth and pretty, and I…”

Again his voice dries up and he looks at Yuzu beseechingly. “Stop, fuck, please. Don't do this to me, Yuzu, you _know_ what I --”

Yuzu interrupts, and Nathan looks up sharply, meeting Yuzu’s gaze in shock at the unspeakably soft, _needy_ tone of Yuzu’s voice.

“I want to _hear_ it.”

“I said that I love your dumb ass,” he says, numb.

“Just like that?” Yuzu presses.

“No!” Now Nathan flushes dark across his cheeks and nose. “Christ, fuck you. No, I--”

He swallows. The anticipation in Yuzu’s dark eyes urges him to go on.

“I kissed your dumb feathery head and I said I love you,” Nathan grumbles. “There. You happy?”

Yuzu pushes himself up, scooting forward and planting himself squarely in Nathan’s lap. “Absolutely not.” Nathan’s wide-eyed beneath him, nose to nose with barely half a foot of space between them, and Yuzu looks down at him firmly.

“My head is not feathery anymore, so the declaration is inaccurate. You have to say it again.”

Nathan exhales; of all the things he feared Yuzu was about to say, that somehow wasn’t one of them. “No,” he huffs. “You haven't transformed in two months, that's _clearly_ not how it works--”

“--Please kiss me.” 

Yuzu is short of breath even through softly parted lips, and Nathan’s heart kicks against the inside of his ribcage as hard as if Yuzu’s just stomped down on the foot pedal of a drum set. Nathan’s nerves are the cymbals jangling, his pulse is the racing drumroll on the snare, and Yuzu is already framing his face with both his hands as Nathan stretches up and crashes into him, mouth open and hungry. Starving.

They _have_ kissed, sort of, when Yuzu was a goat, cat, and swan. Little kitten licks across Nathan’s fingertips from the cat, and soft lipping goat nibbles over the point of his elbow or the ball of his shoulder. A head nudge from the swan. And Nathan had given them back, absent-mindedly placing a kiss on the cat's forehead, gently tugging at the goat's forelock and scratching the itch underneath that it can’t ever reach on its own. And he’d soothed the swan with firm but gentle caresses, stroking the curve of its neck, nudging feathers back in place with carefully combing strokes of his fingertips, spread and angled just right.

But this, Nathan decides, counts differently.

  
  


*

**Author's Note:**

> There are so many more notes and ideas for this AU than I had room to include here - omakes, extra scenes, shenanigans and fluff. Also Meryl Davis and Charlie White are there because I run this town and I make the rules.
> 
> Thank you all for reading! Happy birthday again to my love-me-truly, chupacabra.


End file.
